Abel W. Lenagar

ABEL W. LENAGAR, a resident of Kansas more than thirty years, has long been a farmer and grain merchant, and is now manager of the Farmers Elevator Company at Hudson.

He was born in Van Buren County, Iowa, December 16, 1856. His ancestors were Scotch-Irish and were early settlers in Virginia. His father, Runnels Lenagar, was born in West Virginia in 1822, grew up in that state, was married in Indiana, and was a farmer in Dearborn County in the southern part of that state. For several years he also lived in Kentucky, and about 1846 moved to Van Buren County, Iowa, establishing a home in that state when it was just emerging from wilderness conditions. He lived as a farmer in Van Buren County for many years and in 1886 retired and moved to St. John Kansas, where he made his home until his death in 1903. He was a democrat and a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and also belonged to the Masonic fraternity.

Runnels Lenagar married Catherine Sellers, a native of Indiana. She died in Van Buren County, Iowa, in 1885. Their children were seven in number, Abel W. being the youngest. Benjamin, the oldest, is a retired farmer at Greensburg, Kansas. Mary, now living in Van Buren County, Iowa, married for her first husband Thomas Godown, a farmer, but is now the wife of John Thomas, a liveryman. Jennie died at Battle Creek, Michigan, but at the time was living in McPherson County, Kansas, the widow of Jerry Gibson, a farmer. Catherine, the fourth child, died at the age of twenty years. Alice, who died in Van Buren County, Iowa, married Jerome Walters, a farmer now deceased.

Abel W. Lenagar as a boy attended the rural schools of Van Buren County, Iowa, and his early experience identified him with farming. In 1885, on coming to Kansas, he located in McPherson County and was a practical farmer there for three years. He then removed to Stafford, Kansas, and was employed in several lines of work. In 1903 he began buying grain, and his experience in that business caused him to come to Hudson on June 1, 1917, and become manager of the Farmers Elevator Company.

Mr. Lenagar is a democrat, a member of the Baptist Church, and is affiliated with Stafford Lodges of Masons and Ancient Order of United Workmen. May 22, 1915, at Kinsley, Kansas, he married Miss Flossie Childs, a native of Ohio.

Pages 2408-2409.